The Xbox “Games Store”

I’m an Xbox fan. Ever since the first console, I’ve bought them all. Hell, I even went out of my way to buy the Xbox One in Germany when it wasn’t available in my country yet.

But every time I open the Xbox Games store, a part of me dies.

On the Xbox 360, the “Store” was pretty useful. It featured hot games, popular games, recommended games and it let you sort and filter… basically it made finding a game easy.

Anno 2014, Microsoft changed how the store works, for the Xbox One. Now, we’ve got a “New games” section which lists only four games. If you’re lucky, it doesn’t show four editions of Forza Horizon 2 and zero games under “more”. There’s the game add-ons which is an unordered mess. And demo’s.

But there is no option to filter. No clear way to find games. The only way to find games, other than those that happen to end up in those four pathetic tiles, is the search function. Which is fantastic, if… you know what you’re looking for. And at that point, what do you really need a “Games store” for? You just go out, buy the game online (saving money and the time / cost of downloading 40GB) and that’s it. The Xbox One game store is just pointless and redundant, and there’s no end in sight to this abonimation.